Maximize Shopping Season With Google’s Updated Holiday Ad Guide
The holiday season will be here before you know it. With so many seasonal events, including Christmas, Black Friday, New Year's, and more around the corner, now is the time to start prepping your holiday advertising strategy.
With 87% of holiday shoppers using Google properties – including Search, Maps, and YouTube – to carry out their shopping, mastering Google Ad campaigns needs to be a top priority in every brand’s holiday advertising campaigns.
Each year, Google releases a Holiday Shopping Insights and Ads guide that contains all the latest tips and tricks for getting the most out of your paid search advertising campaigns.
In the run-up to the busiest period of the year, we know you’ve got a lot on your plate. So, we’ve pulled together everything you need to know.
Let’s get started.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
As the saying goes, “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” It’s never too early to start planning your holiday advertising campaigns.
With so much on the to-do list ahead of the festive season, it’s always better to start ticking things off as soon as possible. To start, set seasonal objectives and KPIs and frame your campaign around these specific goals.
The preparation phase is also a great time to optimize product copy or imagery towards the holidays and your goals. You could consider leveraging new AI technology that will assist you in creating and measuring the performance of your paid search advertising.
MAKE YOUR PRODUCTS STAND OUT
As consumers like to shop with visuals, be sure to update your Google Merchant Center feeds with high-resolution photos that showcase your products from different angles and in different contexts. According to Google, products with more than one image get an average of 76% more impressions and 32% more clicks, so it’s recommended that you have at least 3 high-resolution pictures per product.
For businesses in the US, Google offers Product Studio3, a suite of free AI-powered tools that enhance and create high-quality product images. It also generates scenes, increases image resolution, and edits backgrounds, helping to give your holiday visuals an edge over the competition.
USE PRODUCT DIAGNOSTICS
The latest guide recommends using Google Ads’ product diagnostics to boost product performance. Providing detailed automated insights about key conversion-driving elements of your ads—such as out-of-stock inventory, high-bidding items, or missing feed information—this tool is especially important during the holiday season.
EMBRACE AI (IN A WAY THAT WORKS FOR YOUR BUSINESS)
The AI revolution is enabling specialists across every industry to work more efficiently – and advertisers can reap the benefits too. While Google has been building AI and automations into their products and algorithms for some time, their July rollout included an AI that can assist in identifying and capturing consumer demand for your products or services. This release helps you to make more effective marketing decisions, identifying which processes to automate to achieve more conversions and value from your budget, and how best to optimize your strategy for optimal performance.
Remember though, a strong holiday advertising campaign should strike the perfect balance between senior management strategy and automation – only use AI when and where it’s right for your business.
Grab Shoppers' Attention Early
Not everyone leaves their holiday shopping to the last minute. In fact, as of mid-October, the average holiday shopper globally will have already completed around 21% of their shopping.
While that doesn’t mean that you should give your homepage a festive makeover in September, it does mean that you want your brand and products to appear on consumers’ devices while they’re considering these earlier purchases.
Even if they’re not quite ready to buy, potential customers might just be browsing with the holidays in mind, researching the best gifts to buy. With consumers feeling uncertain about the state of the economy, it’s no surprise that 36% said they’re spending more time researching their purchases this year compared to previous years.
REACH CONSUMER DURING THEIR RESEARCH PHASE WITH DEMAND GEN CAMPAIGNS
Online video has become a major source of discovery and inspiration for consumers, especially when it comes to holiday gifting. Now more than ever, shoppers turn to YouTube for their product research and are twice as likely to use this platform compared to other social media. They also rate YouTube ads as 16% more trustworthy and honest than those that they see on other platforms, making it a prime spot for Demand Gen campaigns.
When it comes to product awareness, “shop with me” videos have exploded as a source of gifting inspiration, with the number of uploads featuring the phrase in their title growing 35% year on year.
CONVERT THOSE CONSUMERS WITH VIDEO ACTION CAMPAIGNS
To really drive home the sales on any video content, brands can connect product feeds to their Video Action and Discovery Campaigns. Advertisers that do this see an average of 74% more conversions at a lower cost per acquisition (CPA).
Attract Deal-Seekers During Sales
Though they may start their festive shopping early, more than half of consumers won’t actually make the final purchase until the products come on sale. As such, sale periods are a great time to drive conversions, with 48% of consumers saying that they’re shopping with new brands with better offers or prices more often.
USE LOCAL PROMOTIONS
Promoting local inventory ads to show offers that are unique to specific stores helps to boost your click-through rates across mobile and desktop devices, letting your customers know when your local stores have started their holiday sales.
USE SALE PRICE ANNOTATIONS
Sale price annotations help your ads stand out to deal-seekers by highlighting the savings they can make. This helps to reduce buyer hesitation and boost your ad conversions.
Reach (and Convert) Last-Minute Shoppers
We’ve covered the organized early shoppers, but what about the frenzy of last-minute buyers? Having the option to shop both online and in-store helps shoppers who look at the eleventh hour, with 42% agreeing that it makes holiday shopping easier.
PROMOTE FREE AND FAST SHIPPING
When you’re doing your holiday shopping days before the deadline, you want to know that the gifts will arrive on time — and preferably not have to pay a fortune for shipping. Labeling your ads with fast and free shipping annotations could be what drives shoppers to choose your brand over your competitors. You can even set up account and item-level shipping for specific products.
Once it’s past the shipping cutoff dates, you can encourage customers to come into stores with the reassurance that you have stock remaining.
SHOWCASE IN-STORE HOURS
With shipping cut-off falling around December 20th, local shoppers will need to know where they can find you offline. Performance Max campaigns let you promote your brick-and-mortar store locations in Google Search results, Maps, YouTube, and across other Google platforms. Use these ads to share specific store details including the holiday opening times, pick-up options, and more.
SHOWCASE IN-STORE INVENTORY
Adding store pickup labels to your local inventory ads can attract last-minute customers to your store. Something as simple as letting customers know that items can be picked up in-store today, within a few days, or at curbside can make a world of difference to your top line.
Local inventory ads are also useful for displaying your in-store inventory to shoppers searching on Google, preventing any disappointing trips to the store.
Get the Most Out of Your Holiday Ads This Season
As a Google Premier Agency Partner, Block & Tam’s paid search team are experts in Google paid ads. Together, we make the right data-driven decisions to help you achieve your holiday campaign goals and more. The sooner you get started on your holiday ads, the better. So, get in touch with one of our specialists today!
